


Barobin Day

by Missy



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Humor, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Romance, Trick or Treat 2016, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 19:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8339530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Barney and Robin vow to stop spending Valentine's Day in the usual way.  So they invent Barobin Day, a period of mirth and practical jokes that take tradition's place.  Sometimes Barney wins, sometimes Robin wins - and sometimes they're too tired to prank.  Here are some scenes from their yearly celebrations.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isilloth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isilloth/gifts).



> Your treat idea intrigued me! This was a lot of fun to do, hope you like it!

They came to the decision on their second Valentine’s Day as husband and wife: from that year forward, Barney and Robin Scherbatsky-Stinson would decline to celebrate Valentine’s Day traditionally. 

No more fancy dinners. No more hot tubs. No more awkward three-way dates with the Mosbys and Ericksons. Instead, the day would be replaced with something much more fun: Barobin Day.

On Barobin Day, they would compete in friendly prank wars. The loser would take the winner out to a totally non-romantic date of their choosing. 

It was an ideal choice. No pressure on either of them to be goopy, falsely romantic or weird. No more dragging old baggage out to be poked over. Just pure Barney-and-Robin awesomeness from day to day.

Or so they hoped.

**First Trick:**

There was an unusually abundant number of candies lying on the kitchen table of their shared bungalow in Potsdam. Robin stared at the chocolate from the safe distance of the bedroom entryway while Barney edited his latest blog entry on the living room sofa.

“Oh crap, it Valentine’s Day?” It was the eighteenth – or so she thought. They’d both been so busy that the past two weeks had flown easily by without much thought.

“Hmm?” Barney glanced up. “Oh. Chocolate. I bought a bunch of stuff at the bodega at the end of the block. Go ahead and dig in.”

She raised a suspicious eyebrow at him, approaching the table slowly. When she opened the box the chocolates didn’t explode, and doves didn’t emerge in a flood from the paper liners, so she supposed she was safe. And she was craving a maple cream….

She lifted the lid of the heart-shaped box in the middle only to be confronted by a confetti bomb and a note.

It read, in part: **Dear Robin – there’s one maple cream in one of these boxes. Good luck finding it. Also psych, it’s totally Valentine’s Day!**

“BARNEY!”

She spent hours poking around for that maple cream, but eating it was the sweetest victory she’d had in ages.

 

**Trick Two**

They were in California for an awards dinner, and Barney was doing his best to look sharp and be sharp. Robin, seated comfortably beside him in the back of their rented limo. He didn’t suspect a thing until they were far off the highway. And when their driver pulled over and a masked man tapped on the window, his shriek telegraphed how lost he was.

“TAKE MY WALLET, DON’T RUIN MY TIE!” he yelled.

“Barney, please do what the man says!” Robin begged.

“Are you sassing me?” the guy said, poking Barney’s nose with the gun barrel. 

Barney gasped. “NO! Not a man of your stature and wealth….please don’t shoot me this suit is four days away from retirement!”

“That IS sass! Y’know what I do to sassy guys like you?” 

“Please don’t say shoot them!” Barney yelled.

But instead the driver brought his other hand forward – presenting Barney with a take out menu. “Make sure they have a happy Valentine’s Day!”

Barney gasped. Robin sat beside him grinning. 

“You minx!”

But he was so infinitely grateful not to have to be dead that after the awards dinner he bought her a 24 karat gold sundae. 

 

**One Treat**

They had been married for eight years when he suddenly said, “you know, Valentine’s Day is tomorrow.”

“Is it?” she said.

“Yep,” he said, finger-combing her hair, letting her breathe against him, slowly and gently. 

“Hmmm. Were you…planning on something?”

“Robin, we’re both still recovering from the flu,” Barney said. “I didn’t have the time or the energy to plan anything at all.”

She lay silently against him. “So…”

“…Don’t use the toothpaste in the hall bathroom.”

“Ok. Oh. You might not want to take anything out of the hall closet for awhile. There might be a mannequin wearing a clown suit in the back of it.”

“Thank you.” Barney smiled into her hair. “See, we’re communicating! Grown-up high five!”

She brushed his thumb and limply slapped his chest instead, too weak to get the joy buzzer she’d bought for the day out of the bedside table. Growing up blew but at least they had each other.


End file.
